Pentimento Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Pentimento – Nick Kyme

  About the Author

  An Extract from ‘The Reverie’

  A Black Library Imprint

  eBook license

  Pentimento

  Nick Kyme

  The body stood erect and cruciform, naked and without modesty. Male, though the anatomical excisions made this difficult to define for certain, as did the general disfigurements to the victim overall. It appeared almost ritualistic. A statement of some kind.

  Observation was Mabeth’s art. She had an eye for it, or so Hakasto had joked. Gifted, some said. To her, the old artisan had been like a father. He taught her everything he knew, until eventually she surpassed him. Oka Hakasto’s craft became Mabeth’s craft, she his only student. Then, their work had been venerated around the world, as nobles and oligarchs clamoured for a sitting with the great Hakasto and his protégé. Coin, renown, they had been short of neither.

  And now…

  They say scent is the most powerful sense memory. Sitting in that empty church, the air thick with the reek of copper, Mabeth remembered her master. His legacy had ended with a knife in his neck and his arterial blood making a terrible mess of his other­wise fine robes.

  Coin, renown… but also jealously and greed. She had wept and not changed her mourning robes for six days, her eyes thick with kohl, her lips inked black.

  His death, for all its callous senselessness, was mundane. Not like this. This was art. Grotesque, unconscionable, but art nonetheless. And she knew art. Hakasto had not taught her that. That was innate. She bled art.

  And there was much blood, lustrous and red.

  Now, only the dead would sit for her, and they had little choice or awareness of the matter. As Mabeth sketched, she took in the arms that had been strung by the victim’s own sinews. Hanging limply, as if some godlike and invisible puppeteer held onto them from above. No, not a puppet, she realised. She had misread the artist’s intentions. She sketched splayed feet, their broken toes and bones distended, and the clawed fingers reaching like strange branches. And finally, the position of the body, utterly straight, rigid as any trunk.

  ‘A tree…’ she murmured aloud, pausing to regard it.

  ‘What?’ asked Levio. The proctor sounded gruff, his unshaven face further testimony of either a lack of self-respect or the lateness of the hour. Or both. He was badly dressed in a long coat and peacekeeper fatigues, one of several weary lawmen at large in the church. He worried at the aquila rosary wrapped around his wrist, half eyeing the shadows of the dingy church with only stab-lights to lift the darkness. He hid his irritation poorly.

  ‘A tree,’ Mabeth repeated, her charcoal stylus poised. ‘He has been arranged in the manner and aspect of a tree.’

  ‘There aren’t any trees in the city.’

  ‘I didn’t say it was based on anything in Durgov.’

  Levio took another look. ‘I only see some poor bastard, tortured to death.’ He turned, frowned. ‘You said arranged?’

  Mabeth nodded.

  ‘What do you think it means?’

  ‘Growth, rebirth… knowledge, maybe,’ she said. ‘A tree has broad symbolic meaning.’

  ‘I don’t see meaning. I see madness. City’s infected with it.’

  It had got worse. Ever since the sky had changed and the astropaths had died. No word out, no word in. Entire world had been affected. Something had happened, but no one knew what it was, only that it had. Powerlessness bred fear. Fear bred violence. And so it went.

  ‘Why I am here, Proctor Levio?’

  ‘Arbitrator wants a record.’ He stalled to pick at something in his teeth. ‘Doesn’t want to come down here to see for herself.’

  Mabeth gestured to the perturbed looking hunchback busying around a picter unit.

  ‘Then what’s he here for? Would a pictograph not capture a more accurate impression of the scene? Not to mention be much faster? I’m not complaining,’ she hastened to add, ‘I need the coin. Not much work for an artist when every patron has decided to start hoarding their wealth for the end of days.’

  ‘I honestly do not know,’ admitted Levio. ‘So far, he’s done precisely fuck all.’

  The hunchback’s dark robes hid several disfigurements, most of them cybernetic in nature. He was a sacristan, conversant in the utilisation and repair of machines. Right now, as he switched out parts from the picter or replaced powercells, he appeared only to be conversant in a varied lexicon of expletives.

  ‘Here…’ Levio pulled a folder from his long coat and handed it to Mabeth.

  She opened it and leafed through several flimsies.

  ‘They’re all useless,’ she said, frowning. ‘Just blurred images.’

  ‘Yep. Doesn’t matter what that hunchbacked arsehole does, the picts won’t come out. That’s the sixth picter we’ve tried.’

  ‘How long have you been in here?’

  Levio rubbed his unshaven face and she had her answer.

  Mabeth looked back through the images. They were obfuscated as if overexposed or smeared by a sudden jerk of the lens. But the subject was static, the picter secure and the light steady.

  ‘This is very strange,’ she conceded.

  ‘I’ve gone from strange to irritating, and I’m circling livid. Or suicidal,’ said Levio, ‘it changes by the minute…’

  Mabeth glanced down at her sketch. The rendering was good. The curve of the thigh, the overall musculature, the texture of the lank hair and scarred flesh… As vivid as she had ever been on parchment and almost more real than any pictograph…

  ‘I see,’ she said, handing back the useless flimsies.

  ‘So, if you don’t mind,’ said Levio, ‘hurry it the hell up. I can’t get out of here until you’re finished.’

  He walked away to berate the sacristan, leaving Mabeth to it.

  ‘Charming…’ she whispered, but her work was almost done. Just a little detailing remained. She had a leather field case for carrying all her equipment and pulled from it a magnifying lens she attached over her left eye via a skull frame. Up close, even via the lens, the scene felt… intimate. Every knife stroke revealed. Every abuse. And it was neat murder, almost surgical. It spoke to obsession. Through her enhancing lens, she looked through a window into something dark. She lingered on the face, partly hidden by the hair. Something looked back at her from those cold, dead eyes. Recognition? Mabeth found herself drawn, though she wanted to recoil. The lips were barely parted, but she caught the suggestion of white teeth and then… they moved.

  Paradise…

  Like a lover’s breath against her ear, warm and susurrant. The scent of cloying lavender filled her nose.

  Mabeth tore away the lens, letting out a stifled cry.

  Levio whirled around, reaching for his sidearm, until he realised the girl had shrieked at shadows.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ she said, a little breathless, and out of instinct touched her neck. But there was nothing there. It just felt cold, like a strange absence.

  Levio scowled, standing down as he went to light up a smoke and muttering some about the bad decisions that had led up to this moment.

  Tentatively, Mabeth put the lens back on. Nothing happened. The body remained as it was, horrific but lifeless. There was no voice, no scent of lavender. Just old blood and musty prayer scrolls. She got what she needed and finished up, handing the parchment to the proctor on her way out.

  ‘I expect prompt payment,’ she said by way of a parting shot.

  Levio’s coarse laughter followed Mabeth until she had left the church.

  Gethik was waiting for her outside, the servitor’s dull eyes barely comprehending his surroundings and not so different from the corpse Mabeth had just sketched.

  ‘Follow,’ she uttered as she passed the brutish creature, hearing him fall into clomping lockstep behind her. The city had lost its mind since the killings, so it paid to have protection, even if Gethik was a piece of cyborganic shit better suited to the scrapheap than bodyguard detail. Intimidation went a long way though, and Gethik was big. He smelled of machine oil and rust, but at least it helped to banish the memory of sickly lavender.

  ‘Must be tired…’ she said and through the gaps in the overarching buildings caught glimpses of the sky. A blood-red blush coloured it, like paint clouding in water. Shouts echoed on the warm night air, a sign of the madness to come. She’d be gone before any of that. Mabeth turned away and headed for the mag-rail.

  The other patrons in the carriage gave Gethik a wide berth, though the servitor barely noticed them and the late hour had thinned the crowds substantially so it wasn’t hard to find a seat. Fires lit parts of the city, seen through a grimy window. The violence had started early tonight. It wouldn’t trouble her here, Mabeth reflected, as the rattling journey played out in all its mundanity. Sat in her protector’s shadow, she tried to remember everything she’d experienced in the church.

  She must have imagined it, but it didn’t feel imagined. She had felt his breath, smelled lavender… The voice had sounded old, but melodic. Definitely male. Not an accent she knew, though, and not from Durgov. From elsewhere. Her mind had conjured it from some remembrance, she reasoned. She rubbed her neck, her fingers gently caressing. The downy hairs felt soft to the touch, and her eyelids fluttered.

  Paradise.

  Mabeth sat bolt upright, sudd
enly aware of her surroundings. Perspiration dappled her skin, her fingertips tingling. A face looked back at her, reflected in the glass. Young and pale from a lifetime spent in her studio, shaven haired with a streak of violet running through it. A writhing serpentine neck tattoo, her own design. Jewel­lery on her wrists, gold and platinum. Good robes of warm cerise and a vermilion cloak with a silver artisanal clasp. Last season’s fashions; she couldn’t keep up like she used to, but her clothes and trappings were still finer than most. Affluent, it spoke to her success. She admired her reflection, pleased with what she saw.

  And just behind it, another face.

  Smiling and overlarge. Human and yet…

  Mabeth turned around, heart pounding, but there was no one sitting behind her. A couple of factorum workers from farther back in the carriage glanced up at the sudden movement but quickly became downcast again as the day’s labours grew heavy. When she looked back, the face had gone.

  So startled was she, Mabeth nearly missed her stop and had to dash for the exit, her lumbering retainer in tow.

  ‘I need to find a different line of work, Gethik,’ she said, rubbing her eyes as they walked, her hab-tower close by.

  The servitor did not reply, and merely shadowed her as always.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Mabeth, miming as if he had spoken. ‘I’m in the wrong profession?’ She gave a rueful shake of the head as Auric House came into view. Not so gilded any more with its tatty facade and chipped colonnade. ‘Yes, you’re right, I do need a change in fortune.’

  Greeting the door warden with a tired wave, she went inside. He smiled as she passed, his mouth altogether too wide under the vision slit of his helmet, the teeth too white and too many. Mabeth recoiled, but the guard’s sour look had reappeared almost immediately.

  I’m losing my damn mind…

  She hurried inside.

  Her well-appointed rooms greeted Mabeth upon her return. Everything was as she had left it. The chaise, the hookah pipe, her silks and fine drapery, the ornaments and artist’s lectern. Dark, on account of the hour, she instructed Gethik to light the lamps. The gloom lifted, shadows lengthened in corners and filled alcoves. The glass shades coloured the light, turning it into competing jades and crimsons. Mabeth collapsed onto a pile of plush cushions, her hand outstretched for the drink that Gethik then provided.

  A sip of absinthe helped ease the nerves, warming as it passed down her throat.

  ‘Leave me…’ she uttered, reaching for the hookah as Gethik turned without comment and retreated into his alcove, out of her sight. Mabeth supped on the pipe, taking long draughts of kalma smoke. It had been hard to acquire and not a little expensive too. Worth every coin though. She imbibed and smoked until the bottle had drained and her eyelids grew heavy. Fingers slipping from the neck of the pipe, she drifted into a fitful sleep. As she breathed, the smell of over-sweet lavender lingered before something sharper replaced it. And she dreamed, of a forest – not of trees but of the dead, their limbs contorted in branches, their feet rooted to the earth. And the red, red sap of their blood.

  Mabeth woke drenched in sweat, the lingering scent of warm copper already fading. Grey light surrounded her, the hour still early. Gethik must have doused the lamps. She started as she saw him looming over her, his dull bionic eye glowing like dirty amber.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she croaked, annoyed at her own skittishness. ‘What are you doing, slave?’

  Gethik didn’t respond. Her throat felt hoarse like she’d been screaming in her sleep. The servitor’s protection protocols must have kicked in.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she lied, deciding to get up. That’s when she noticed the metal tube in Gethik’s hands. He hadn’t activated because of a protection protocol, he had taken receipt of a package. It came with an attached note. A snap of her fingers and Gethik lit the nearest lamp.

  Mab, the note began, I think I may have found the last decent paying commission in this entire shit heap of a city. She knew the handwriting.

  Yrenna was Mabeth’s abettor, a seeker of work. It was she who had secured the contract with the peacekeepers. Hardly what Mabeth was used to but it kept the debtors at bay and her decanters full. There was a time when they’d enjoyed more than just a business relationship, but Mabeth’s tastes had changed and so had her suitors. Still, old memories stirred at seeing her delicate script and provoked a frisson of lust. She turned over the parchment onto the opposite side.

  Private contract. Three pieces, simple restoration needed. Yes, I know it’s still low end, but it pays better than the peacekeepers and there are fewer dead bodies. She signed off ‘Y’, adding a postscript. And that ugly golem needs a thorough cleanse, by the way.

  The note came with the address of the commissioner, and the fee amount her abettor had brokered.

  Mabeth smiled and took the metal tube. ‘Well done, Yrenna.’

  The tube had been marked with an unfamiliar merchant’s sigil that looked like a ‘V’. Inside, she found three pieces of rolled up canvas. Unfurling each in turn, Mabeth laid them out on the floor, weighing them down with ornaments to keep them from curling back up. They were venerations, holy scenes from Imperial history, albeit faded and in need of repair. She didn’t recognise the saints depicted or the other religious figures, the cardinals and the abbesses. She only saw the work ahead and began immediately.

  Mabeth fashioned simple frames for each piece from which she could begin the restoration, and then placed them upon her artist’s lectern, which was wide enough to accommodate all three. Curious, she thought, regarding them as a set, and wondering what interest a mercantile house would have in Ecclesiarchal relics.

  A thorough assessment of the condition of the pieces preceded any actual work. The canvas was old, that much was quick to determine, although precisely how old she genuinely couldn’t say. It had been preserved with oils or perhaps some synthetic equivalent, which made the canvas slightly stiff and flaky at the edges. After she handled each piece to clean them, she noticed a farinaceous substance layering her gloves. Again, she couldn’t identify it and it only happened on that first occasion so she assumed the paintings hadn’t been disturbed for some time.

  She worked steadily, reinvigorating the tired pastels, giving them vibrancy and depth. Mabeth felt reinvigorated, not unlike the ecclesiarchs in the paintings. The brighter the image became, the lighter her mood, as if faith and protection radiated from it.

  Hours passed without her realising, and by the time the fonogram started to drone, she had restored a cardinal’s vestments and trappings. He was depicted standing upon some nondescript promontory, giving a fiery sermon to his flock.

  The fonogram droned again.

  She tried to ignore it but it began to irritate, and when she turned and saw the peacekeepers’ ident she swore loudly.

  Levio’s gravel voice crackled through the receiver cup when she picked it up. ‘Need your talents again.’

  ‘I have other work, proctor.’

  ‘That can wait. Your contract gives the city unrestricted access.’

  Fucking Yrenna, she thought, feeling less amorous towards the woman as Levio reminded her of that particular clause.

  ‘Can it possibly wait? I am in the middle of something.’

  ‘So am I… It’s another one.’

  And with those three words, Mabeth knew she would be leaving the hab as soon as the call was over.

  ‘Same as last time?’

  ‘Different…’ Levio sounded like he was about to say more, but then swallowed audibly to clear his throat and gave her the address.

  ‘Different how?’

  ‘I’m not describing it over the fonogram,’ he snapped, then quickly regained his composure. ‘Just get down here.’

  He cut the feed and the fonogram line went dead.

  ‘Arsehole…’ Mabeth looked back at the paintings. They would have to wait. The dead, it seemed, would not.

  Another dilapidated church, another depravity. The sacristans had returned, more out of hope than expectation, and they had just finished rigging a string of lumens to flood the scene with pearlescent light as Mabeth made her entrance.

  She had to crane her neck to see. The victim had been suspended on wire – no, not wire, the veins had been pulled from its arms, woven together and used to hang it like a piece of art.